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VaLlley Forge 

By 

W. H. RICHARDSON 

Norristown, Pa. 

Illustrated from Photographs 
by the Author 



Excerpt, by courtesy of the Publisher, 
from The New England Magazine for FebrxiOLry, I90I 



oyU'y3'r 



THE 



New England Magazine. 



New Series. 



FEBRUARY, 1901. 



Vol. XXIII. No. 6. 



VALLEY FORGE. 

Illustrated from photographs by the author. 

By W. H. Richardson. 



WHEN the name of Valley 
Forge is mentioned, the 
average American immediate- 
ly associates with it the encampment 
of the Continental army during- the 
terrible winter of 1777-78, when the 
hungry and forlorn champions of a 
well-nigh hopeless cause, wasted by 
wounds, privation and disease, were 
able only to "occupy a cold, bleak hill, 
and sleep under frost and snow, with- 
out clothes or blankets." The thou- 
sands of pilgrims who now visit that 
historic shrine, Washington's head- 
quarters at Valley Forge, wander 
through its rooms and halls and think 
of the great commander-in-chief as he 
wrestled with problems that would 
have appalled ordinary men ; of the 
malign conspiracy he had to confront 
and confound ; of the misery and 
wretchedness among his sufifering 
soldiers which he had to contemplate, 
the pity of which he acknowledges 
from his soul, but which he has no 
power to relieve nor prevent ; and of 
the almost superhuman strength and 
courage which he there displayed in 
keeping alive through the long, weary 
months the feeble spark of a thing- 
called the American Revolution, 
eventually fanning it into a flame that 
has burned with increasing brilliancy 
to our own day. 

Nestline: among- the trees near the 



point at which the Valley Creek joins 
the Schuylkill is the ancient pointed- 
stone house of miller Isaac Potts, the 
structure which all America cher- 
ishes to-day as the home of Washing- 
ton for the half year that the army 
was encamped in that country. In it 
he faced the crises of the winter and 
spring with about as much to 
brighten and lighten his life as his 
men had. "Three days successively 
we have been destitute of bread, two 
days we have been entirely without 
meat ;" "our sick naked, our well 
naked, our unfortunate men in cap- 
tivity naked ;" "the unfortunate sol- 
diers were in want of everything ; they 
had neither coats, hats, shirts nor 
shoes ; their feet and legs froze till 
they became black, and it was often 
necessary to amputate them ;" — these 
are but a few of the horrible pictures 
which met the view of the com- 
mander-in-chief whichever way he 
turned. And all this was almost 
within sound of the revelry of the 
warmly housed and well fed British 
soldiers in Philadelphia. 

Even a casual reading of the his- 
tory of the Pennsylvania campaign 
leading up to Valley Forge in the fall 
of 1777 cannot fail to impress one with 
the supreme optimism of the Ameri- 
can leader. Surely it was no pleas- 
ant retrospect to look back over the 

S97 



59^ 



J 'ALLEY FORGE. 




WASHINGTON S HEADQUARTERS AT VALLEV FURGE. 



battlefields of the past four months ; 
and yet in the orderly book there is 
an entry dated December 17, two 
days before the formal occupation of 
\'alley Forge, in which the army is 
reminded that althoujc^h, in some in- 
stances, there were failures, "yet upon 
the whole, fieaven hath smiled upon 
our arms and crowned them with sig'- 
nal success." Howe landed, it will 
be recalled, on August 25, at the head 
of Chesapeake Bay, with 18,000 men 
and a determination to take the rebel 
capital. The first serious collision of 
the hostile armies occurred at Chad's 
Ford, on September 11. A bit of 
carelessness in scouting and a piece 
of blundering reporting changed the 
fortunes of the day from what would 
have been a victory into a retreat. 
More than one thousand men were 
subtracted from the fighting force of 
the patriots, and Howe occupied the 
American camps on the night of the 
battle of Brandywine. Yet Washing- 
ton took occasion to report to the 
President of Congress that "the 
troops were in good spirits." Nine 
days later a division under General 



Wayne was attacked by General Grey, 
and what is popularly, but altogether 
inappropriately, termed the Paoli 
massacre, with its 150 casualties, was 
the result. 

Then came the battle of German- 
town, on October 4. How much the 
bitterness of that defeat must have 
been emphasized at the time may be 
gathered from one of those pretty let- 
ters General Wayne used to write to 
his "Dear Polly." The action, in his 
judgment, would have put an end to 
the war, had not the smoke and con- 
fusion prevented the following up of 
a victory actually won at one phase 
of the operation. "The commander- 
in-chief retiirns his thanks to the gen- 
eral and other officers and men con- 
cerned in the attack," and sees, not- 
withstanding the disaster, "that the 
enemy is not proof against a vigorous 
attack, and may be put to flight when 
boldly pursued." Germantown had 
cost nearly 1,200 of the 8,000 men en- 
gaged ; and the weary, wretched and 
ragged soldiers — for troubles with 
the commissary had now started — sat 
down that night on the old camp- 



VALLEY FORGE. 



599 



ground at Pennypacker's Mills to 
catch their breath, while the officers 
began to plan for another set-to with 
a victorious l)ut vulnerable antago- 
nist. 

On Sei)teniber 26 the British ad- 
vance had entered and taken posses- 
sion of Philadelphia ; and safe within 
that hospitable city they successfully 
resisted all attempts to lure them out 
or dislodge them. For nearly six 
weeks, from November 2 to Decem- 
ber II, the Americans were strongly 
intrenched at Whitemarsh. thirteen 
m i 1 e s n o r t h - 
west of the 
city. Their 
gradually- 
weakening 
line was too 
thin, however. 
to give battle 
to the British, 
and too near 
Philadelphia to 
feel absolutely 
safe from at- 
tack ; so it was 
decided to 
move to a 
more advan- 
tageous loca- 
t i o n , from 
which the in- 
vaders could 
at least be 
watched and 
kept in check. 
The story of 
the march to Valley Forge is another 
chapter in the epic of that frightful 
winter. Various participants have 
contributed their testimony about the 
dismal conditions under which the 
journey was prosecuted. A Pennsyl- 
vania lieutenant notes in his diary 
that they started to cross the Schuyl- 
kill at Swede's Ford, not over 800 
feet wide at that point, at six o'clock 
in the evening of December 12, and 
that it was three o'clock the next 
morning before they reached camp at 
Gulf Mill, two miles further along, 
"where we remained without tents or 




blankets in the midst of a severe snow- 
storm." A Connecticut warrior por- 
trays his misery at the same place in 
this suggestive style: "We are or- 
dered to march over the river. It 
snows- — I'm sick — eat nothing — no 
whiskey — no baggage — Lord — Lord 
— Lord — till sunrise crossing the river 
— cold and uncomfortable." After 
the army had been four days in camp, 
the tents came and were pitched for 
the first time, "to keep the men more 
comfortable." How appropriate, then, 
the day of thanksgving and prayer 
that Congress 
JP" had ordered 
for the eight- 
eenth! 

When the 
army arrived 
at Valley 
Forge on the 
nineteenth, the 
campaign for 
the year had 
practically 
closed ; Gen- 
eral Howe had 
taken Phila- 
delphia — or, 
as Franklin 
])ut it, Phila- 
delphia had 
taken General 
Howe; the 
A mericans 
were huddled 
around their 
camp fires 
away, freezing, 
starving, wasting from disease ; but 
still the characteristic cheerfulness 
of Washington shines forth ; he re- 
members that a French ship has ar- 
rived at Portsmouth with a large 
quantity of munitions of war, and he 
extends his congratulations to the 
army upon the auspicious event. 

But the saddest feature of the 
months of suffering that followed was 
the fact that most of it was unneces- 
sary. Then, as now, members of 
Congress had their favorites, and men 
were selected for the commissariat 



DUURW.VY, \VASUI.\GTU.\ S HEADQUARTERS. 



twentv-two miles 



6oo 



VALLEY FORGE. 



without regard for their fitness, — in- 
competents, whose especial claim to 
fame to-day rests upon their having 
furnished a Revolutionary ancestry 
for the familiar stories of the bungling 
commissary in our late unpleasant- 
ness with Spain. We are told that, at 
the very time the barefooted Conti- 
nentals were making bloody tracks in 
the snow on the bleak hills of Valley 
Forge, there were hogsheads of shoes 
— somewhere else. In answer to 
General Wayne's fervid appeal for 
clothing for his frost-bitten sol- 
diers came 
the reply — 
which might 
be counted 
almost hu- 
morous but 
for the 
ghastly pic- 
ture of his 
men clutch- 
ing shreds of 
old blankets 
over their 
nakedness — 
that the de- 
lay in fur- 
nishing it 
was "due to 
the want of 
buttons." 

Fortunate- 
ly there is 
somethin g 
else than 
tragedy to 
be read in 
davs. The 




RIVER ROAD. 
The village of Valley Forge lies in the hollow at the right. 



the records of those 
old orderly books, for 
example, tell us a great deal that 
has a difit'erent sort of flavor. 
Here is an account of a court 
martial held to consider the case of a 
Virginia captain who was charged 
with having been "so far Ellivated 
with liquor when on the parade for 
Exercising as rendered him imCapa- 
ble in doing his duty with precission." 
Luckily the good captain was able to 
prove an alibi, or that something else 
was responsible for his "Ellivation," 
— for his acquittal is duly noted. 



Then there was a Pennsylvania lieu- 
tenant tried for "unofficer and ungen- 
tlemanlike behavior in taking 2 mares 
and a barrel of carpenter's tools on 
the line, which mares he conveyed 
away, and sold the tools at private 
sale." The chronicler does not give 
a detailed account of the testimony ; 
but it is written that the court found 
that while the lieutenant was "guilty 
of the facts alledged" in the charge, 
yet they did not amount to "unof^cer 
and ungentlemanlike behavior, and so 
acquit him of it." There is something 

so delight- 
fully vague 
about the 
verdict that 
we are led 
to wonder 
how far an 
officer and 
gentlem a n 
at Valley 
Forge might 
have gone in 
the business 
of picking 
up and dis- 
posing of 
stray mares 
and barrels 
of carpen- 
ter's tools 
before cross- 
ing the bor- 
ders of pro- 
priety. 

It was 
while the army was at Valley 
Forge, too, that sweeping reforms in 
its organization were inaugurated 
Early in the spring, Frederick Wil- 
liam Augustus, Baron von Steuben, 
arrived there, and started upon his 
duties as inspector-general. "The 
arms at Valley Forge," he wrote, 
"were in a horrible condition, covered 
with rust, half of them without bay- 
onets, many from which a single shot 
could not be fired. The pouches 
were quite as bad as the arms. A 
great many of the men had tin boxes 
instead of pouches ; others had cow- 



VALLEY FORGE. 



6oi 




LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE FORTIFIED HILL .SHOWING MOUNT JOY. 

General Huntington's Connecticut troops occupied the land shown in the foreground of the picture; General 

Conway's Pennsylvania and General Maxwell's New Jersey troops, ihe middle distance at the left. 

may safely say no such thin,2^ ex- 
isted." 

Von Steuben, from all accounts, 



horns ; and muskets, carbines, fowl- 
ing-pieces and rifles were to be seen 
in the same company. The descrip- 
tion of the dress is most easily given. 
The men were literally naked, some 
of them in the fullest extent of the 
word. The oflficers who had coats 
had them of every color and make. 
I saw officers at a grand parade at 
Valley Forge mounting guard in a 
sort of dressing-gown, made of an old 
blanket or a woollen bed-cover. With 
regard to their military discipline, I 



was a man who would rather fight and 
work than eat or sleep ; and so, per- 
haps, it is not surprising that he fash- 
ioned so wonderful a weapon from 
the woefully raw and rough material 
he had to deal with. Rising at three 
o'clock in the morning, he would be 
on the parade at sunrise, take a mus- 
ket in his own hands, and show the 
picked squad just how the thing was 




EAST FROM FORT HUNTINGTON. 



602 



I -ALLEY FORGJl. 




CIENEKAL WAVM-: S HEADQUARTERS. 

to be done. In a few weeks of that 
sort of personal elifort he had the 
whole camp fired with his own enthu- 
siasm, so that the men with whom he 
beg'an were able to execute the most 
dif^cult movements with the greatest 
precision. The petty jealousies, the 
sectional feeling, of the various con- 
tingents were forgotten, and all 
seemed to be animated by a nobler ri- 
valry that boded a different outlook 
for the cause. x\ little later we see 
that regenerated army not only stur- 
dy enough to withstand the fiercest 
onslaughts of 
British guards and 
grenadiers, but 
capable also to 
beat them at their 
own favorite busi- 
ness of the bay- 
onet charge. 

The house in 
which Baron von 
Steuben lived 
while at Valley 
Forge is still 
standing. A mile 
or so southeast of 
it is the house 
that was the mil- 
itary home of 
General Wayne, 
the dashing of^- 
cer who made 



much of the honest work 
(lone by the Prussian drill- 
master. It was the bravery 
and discipline of the troops 
under "j\Iad Anthony" at 
Monmouth which gave lustre 
to the American arms and set 
him in the hearts of his coun- 
trymen as a "modern Le- 
onidas." 

In striking contrast with 
the sombre coloring which 
the name of Valley Forge 
suggests was the brilliant 
sortie of a party of 2,500 men 
under La Fayette, on May 
18, 1778. For the general 
purpose of gathering informa- 
tion about the British, the 
youthful Frenchman was directed to 
proceed toward the hostile lines at 
Philadelphia. Early on the morning 
of that day his command arrived at 
Barren Hill, on the east side of the 
Schuylkill, some eight or nine miles 
from the city. From that point the 
wings were extended to cover other 
highways, and scouting parties sent 
into Philadelphia, one of them giving 
the revellers at the Mischianza a ter- 
rible scare. Another object of the 
demonstration was to develop the 
streno-th of the enemv ; and in this it 




HEADQUARTERS OF GENERALS STEUBEN AND DUPORTAIL. 



J'ALLEY FORGE. 



60^ 



was highly successful, for an over- 
whelming force set out from Philadel- 
phia to surround the American divi- 
sion and carry La Fayette back to the 
city, where a dinner partv awaited his 
coming. The details of the opera- 
tions around Barren Hill church and 
its ancient burying-ground, the fail- 
ure of the carefully laid plans of the 
British, the withdrawal of the Ameri- 
can command from an exceedingly 
perilous position to a safe place on 
the opposite side of the Schuylkill, 
combine to make one of the most 
spirited chapters in the narrative of 
Valley Forge. 

Of course it should not be forgot- 
ten that the news of the French al- 
liance reached the army at X'alley 
Forge ; and from 
that glad first of 
May, when Wash- 
ington announced 
it, the local lit- 
erature seems to 
have taken on a 
sprightliness it did 
not possess be- 
fore. The orderly 
book from that 
time fairly rings 
with directions for 

grand parades, general rejoicings, 
manoeuvres before members of 
the "grand" congress ; and divine 
services are not forgotten. There 
are councils of war and speculations 
as to the probable course of the evi- 
dently uncomfortable enemy. As 
early as May 23 it was known that the 
evacuation of Philadelphia had been 
decided upon. Soon the news came 
that transports in the Delaware were 
being loaded with baggage and 
stores. Then the rumors of the 
coming of D'Estaing's fleet decided 
for the British that the walking to 
New York would probably be safer 
than the sailing. On the eighteenth 
of June the first divisions of the Con- 
tinental army left Valley Forge and 
occupied Philadelphia, taking posses- 
sion of the city only a few hours after 
its former guests were gone. The 



next day the mass of the army — no 
longer the disorganized conglomera- 
tion of colonial troops, but a thor- 
oughly welded, homogeneous Ameri- 
can army — was making all possible 
haste after the retiring Sir Henry 
Clinton, his 17,000 troops and twelve 
mile supply train. 

From a military point of view the 
selection of \'alley Forge for the en- 
campment was a most admirable one. 
Two of its boundaries, the west and 
north, were deep streams, whose pas- 
sages were easily defended, while the 
approaches from the east and south 
were absolutely dominated by the 
heights which rose in the angle of 
these water courses. A brief descrip- 
tion of the topography of the country 




GENER.\L KNOX S HEADOU.XRTERS. 

will put the reader more closely in 
touch with the subject. 

Imagine the Valley Creek flowing 
due north between precipitous hills 
for nearly a mile before it reaches the 
Schuylkill River. Mount Joy, the 
highest summit on the east bank, is 
fully a mile from the river, and it lifts 
its wooded crest 426 feet above the 
sea level. A little further to the north 
is another hill, which is really a sort 
of spur of Mount Joy, 350 feet high ; 
while still further ofT to the northeast 
is a third hill, with its summit some- 
thing more than 100 feet below that 
of Mount Joy. On the eastern de- 
scent of these hills the citizens of 
that long departed community have 
left the indelible record of their occu- 
pation. Mount Joy and her two sis- 
ters are still the proud wearers of 
their grass-grown chaplets, lines of 



6o4 



VALLEY FORGE. 




THE INTRENCIIMENTS NEAR 
THE RIVER ROAD. 

earthworks, i,6oo feet, 
300 feet and 1,300 feet 
long, thrown up near the 
crests of the three by the 
toilers in the youth of 
our nation. Below these 
works are still to be seen 
Fort Huntington, pro- 
tecting the north end of 
the lines and dominating 
the River road, a high- 
way p a ra 1 1 e 1 i n g the 
Schuylkill all the way 
into Philadelphia, and 
the deeper and better 
preserved Fort Wash- 
ington at the south end of the lines on 
Mount Joy commanding the ap- 
proach from the south and west. 

Further down, the hills break gent- 
ly into an undulating landscape, upon 
which most of the brigades were en- 
camped. At the south end of Mount 
Joy, beyond Fort Washington, were 
General Woodford's Virginia troops. 
North of Fort Washington, and on 
the same hill, were General Maxwell's 
New Jerseymen and General Knox's 
artillery. In the cove or hollow in 
front of the shoulder of Mount Joy 
were the Pennsylvania troops com- 
manded by General Conway — the 
same Conway who is remembered in 
history solely for his connection with 
the infamous cabal against Washing- 
ton. Then, next the River road, near 



to the fort which bears his name, 
General Jedediah Huntington's 
Connecticut troops were en- 
camped. 

Still further down the slope 
and lying back of the outer line 
of intrenchments — now entirely 
disappeared — beginning at the 
south and running in a curved 
line to the northeast, were the 
encampments of General Scott's 
X'irginians, General Wayne's 
h""irst and Second Pennsylva- 
nians. General Poor's New 
Yorkers, General Glover's Mas- 
sachusetts troops, General 




Learned's New Hampshire men, 
General Patterson's Vermonters, 
General Weedon's Virginians, and 
General Muhlenberg with his 
Pennsylvanians and Virginians 
on the extreme left. The loca- 
tions of these thirteen brigades can be 
better comprehended by imagining a 
pair of gigantic compasses extended 
to sixty degrees, with the head to the 
south. One leg laid to the north 
along the three hills would roughly 
cover the inner line of four brigades 
first mentioned ; the other leg ex- 
tended to the northeast would cover 
the outer line of nine brigades last 
named. Upon the River road, upon 
which the points would rest, were 
General Varnum's Rhode Islanders 
and a battery known as Fort Piatt or 



VALLEY FORGE. 



605 



the Star redoubt. A well defined 
knoll in a field about two hundred 
yards east of the building- in which 
General Varnum had his headquar- 
ters marks the site of this fortifica- 
tion, which was built to command the 
approach to Sullivan's bridge. This 
was a temporary structure thrown 
across the Schuylkill about a quarter 
of a mile northeast of the fort. 

The sites of the huts occupied by 
some of the officers can also be readily 
traced in the thicket about a quarter 
of a mile east of the star redoubt. 
When these structures were erected 
the earth was banked up around the 
logs as an additional protection from 
the biting cold, and in the remains to- 
day the regularity of the plan of this 
diminutive village is quite apparent. 
Just across the River road at this 
point the ground slopes sharply to 
the south. Close to the foot of the 
declivity is a large sycamore standing 
alone. Near it is the grave of John 
Waterman, one of the many heroes 
from Rhode Island who never went 
home from the war. A substantial 
wire cage now entirely covers the 
grave — not for the purpose of keep- 
ing John Waterman in, as some ir- 
reverent visitor has remarked, but for 
keeping vandals out. It is rather dif- 
ficult to understand how 
relic hunters who came 
before the cage ever man- 
aged to leave as much as 
they did of this lonely 
monument. 

The location of the va- 
rious brigades, etc., as 
just given, is based upon 
the investigations of Jared 
Sparks, who, in illustrat- 
ing the letters of Wash- 
ington in the early part of 
this century, had a map 
prepared under the aus- 
pices of John Armstrong, 
then secretary of war. An 
old man named Davis 
gave his recollection of 
the various dispositions 
of the different encamp- 



ments, and his information helped 
to plot the map. It is a curi- 
ous fact that no contemporary map 
of the whole camp was known to 
be in existence until 1897, when that 
indefatigable antiquarian, Hon. S. W. 
Pennypacker, secured from Amster- 
dam a set of original drafts and plans 
of the Revolutionary period, drawn 
by a French engineer with the armj. 
Among them was a priceless map of 
\^alley Forge. This map exhibits 
slight deviations from the arrange- 
ment already quoted, and has less 
detail; but apart from its inestimable 
value as a unique historical docu- 
ment, it tells what was not known be- 
fore, that Lord Stirling's brigade of 
Carolina troops was encamped on the 
west bank of Valley Creek, opposite 
general headquarters, at the spot that 
has hitherto been allotted to the artifi- 
cers ; and further it reveals the fact 
that Washington's headquarters be- 
fore he occupied the Potts house were 
not, as has been alleged, in a mar- 
quee, but in a house some distance 
southeast of Valley Forge. 

Valley Forge takes its name from 
an iron-working plant established 
there many years before the militant 
Americans made it famous The 
musty records of the past tell us that 




INTERIOR OF FORT HUNTINGTON. 



6o6 



VALLEY FORGE. 




LAFAYETTE S HEADQUARTERS. 

in 1757 one John Potts purchased 
property which inchided what was 
then known as Mount Joyforg-e. This 
stood on the banks 
of Valley Creek, 
the fall of that 
stream as it passed 
on down to the 
Schuylkill through 
the narrow gorge 
between the high 
hills on either hand 
furnishing an abun- 
dance of power. 
The business of 
Mount Joy forge — 
or the Valley forge, 
as it soon came to 
be known locally — 
was a very flourish- 
ing one ; a great 
many men and 
teams were em- 
ployed in making 
its products. Ironmaster John Potts 
saw that a flour mill which could fur- 
nish feed for the horses and flour for 
the drivers would be a profitable ad- 
junct to the older industry on the 
creek; and in 1758 this was built — 
and it lasted until 1843. when it was 
destroyed by fire; later it was rebuilt 
a little further up the stream, almost 
opposite the present headquarters 
building, and after serving as a paper 



mill for many years it was finally 
dismantled and is now falling into 
decay. 

About the same year that John 
Potts built the flour mill the famous 
mansion was also erected. In 1768 
both the mill and house came into the 
possession of his son Isaac, and the 
forge went to another son, Joseph. 
One of the earliest historical refer- 
ences to this mill appears in a letter 
from Richard Peters, secretary of 
war, to Thomas Wharton, president 
^ of the Executive Covmcil of Pennsyl- 
vania. He wrote on August 30, 1777, 
about "a large quantity of flour spoil- 
ing for want of baking; it lies at Val- 
ley Forge." If Isaac Potts had been 
a modern advertiser, he would doubt- 
less have claimed that it was the taste 
of that flour of his which later secured 
for him the exclusive trade of a great 




■^'^v^' 



j_iii .J i ■' ' [■JMiiiin \iimiSwBSlF' 



LAFAYETTE S Hi: 



I Ml-: REAR. 



and marketing gal 



galaxy of public men and the entire 
American army for six months. 
That illustrious housekeeper, Martha 
Washington, must have eaten bread, 
perhaps prepared by her own hands, 
made from this same flour of Isaac 
Potts's mill. How could a miller 
ever let such an opportunity for get- 
ting a testimonial about it from so 
preeminent an authority as the Gen- 
eral's wife slip by him! 

While dealing with Isaac Potts it 



VALLEY FORGE. 



60/ 




GENERAL MUHLENBERG S HEADQUARTERS 

will be proper to refer to an incident 
in which he is involved and which has 
been repeatedly embalmed in verse 
and gayly colored lithographs. Every- 
body has heard how Washington was 
discovered at prayer in the woods 
above the headquarters, pleading 
with the Almighty for guidance 
through the troublous times which 
then beset his country. The discov- 
ery is said to have been made by "a 
good old Quaker," sometimes re- 
ferred to as a blacksmith ; but a man- 
uscript in the hand of his daughter in- 
forms us that the "good old Quaker" 
who viewed the remark- 
able spectacle was twenty- 
sev en-year-old Isaac 
Potts. 'After the death of 
Washington he pro- 
nounced a eulogy on his 
character in Friends' 
meeting, that was a mas- 
terly production, a mem- 
ber of Congress declaring 
that he would not go to 
hear "Light Horse Harry" 
Lee's address in the 
Lutheran Church in Phil- 
adelphia because he had 
just heard "a much better 
one than he will deliver, 
from an old Quaker." 

A few years since the 
headquarters building was 



restored to its condition of 
nearly a century and a 
quarter ago. "'The Gen- 
eral's apartments is very 
small," wrote Mrs. Wash- 
ington from there; "he has 
had a log cabin built to 
dine in, which has made 
our quarters much more 
tolerable than they were at 
first." The log dining- 
room has been rebuilt, and 
the whole house, with its 
sacred memories, has been 
given over to the perpetua- 
tion of "the times which 
tried men's souls." A. sub- 
terranean passageway 
which once led to the 
river's edge has been freshly vaulted 
for a long distance ; one room 
of the house is adorned with a 
chronological portraiture of Wash- 
ington ; others contain many in- 
teresting pictures, pieces of furniture 
and other relics of the Colonial and 
Revolutionary eras. Externally the 
substantial and comfortable look 
about the building is very impressive, 
its simple yet dignified proportions 
appealing at once to the good taste 
of every visitor. The curious porch 
over the front door, the exquisite 
hand-made mouldinsr and other de- 




HEAUgUARTERS OF GENERALS VARNUM AND DE KALB. 



6o8 



VALLEY FORGE. 



tails of its architecture are of a char- 
acter seldom seen in any structure 
of this generation. The house and 
grounds are now owned and cared for 
by the Centennial and Memorial As- 
sociation of Valley Forge. 

Tt is to the credit of the state of 
Pennsylvania that she has done even 
a little in the way of acquiring owner- 
ship in this hallowed ground. So far 




VALLEY CREEK. 



the sum of $35,000 has been spent by 
the Commonwealth, and about 250 
acres of land, embracing the inner 
line of breastworks and the two prin- 
cipal fortifications, purchased. Na- 
ture has been more generous than the 
state in preserving the grounds for 
the free enjoyment of all generations, 
in that she has admirably provided 
against their obliteration by putting 
forth a fine growth of trees. On May 
30, 1893, the Valley Forge Commis- 
sion was created by act of Legisla- 
ture, and the committee of public 
spirited gentlemen who formed it 
went actively to work, with the result 
stated. In their last report to the 
governor they recommended the open- 
ing up of an avenue which would give 
access to the site of the nine brigade 
encampments along the outer line of 
intrenchments, besides the laying out 
of such roads or paths as would put 
the existing relics of Valley Forge 
within easy reach of tourists. The 
cost would be $50,000 ; but the com- 



mittee is now without funds, and 
Pennsylvania has not yet seen fit to 
spend so much additional money in 
that sort of patriotism. There should 
be no question as to the value to be 
received from such an investment. 
Americanism as a principle would be 
more deeply felt and better taught; 
the spirit of nationality which was 
born at Valley Forge would be more 
forcibly impressed upon the mind of 
every visitor, and the whole country 
would be the gainer. When some 
disposition is dispayed by Pennsyl- 
vania that looks like real interest in 
caring for these things, it is likely 
that other states whose sons suffered 
in those terrible days would be proud 
to erect memorials to them. Tt has 
been suggested as not outside the 
range of probabilities that the na- 
tional government would erect a 
great monumental tower on the sum- 
mit of Mount Joy, from which the 
whole plan of the encampment could 
be comprehended. Local chapters of 
the Daughters of the American Rev- 
olution are now working actively in 
the matter of interesting the coming 
session of the Pennsylvania Legisla- 
ture in further condemnation of prop- 
erty ; and it is to be hoped that the 
state will manifest her belief in his- 
toric shrines as a valuable asset in 
the Commonwealth. 

Another phase of popular interest 
in Valley Forge has been developed 
by the movement, recently inaugu- 
rated, to make the place a govern- 
ment reservation. At a meeting held 
under the auspices of the Valley 
Forge National Park Association in 
Independence Hall, Philadelphia, on 
December 19th last, the project, 
which has the hearty approval of 
President McKinley, was given con- 
siderable impetus. A bill has already 
been introduced into Congress, pro- 
viding for an appropriation to purchase 
the desired property and then main- 
tain it under the jurisdiction of the 
War Department. 



OF CONGRESS 

M 



